Cynicism & the Biennales

This article from The Daily Beast is interesting.  It makes you think but it bas a bitchy tone which makes it delicious, in a way, like gossip. But it calls out the sale of the image above and exposes what has become of the biennales.

And then, of course, there’s also our 21st-century, celebrity-ravenous, hair-trigger media. In late May that hunger had its True Blood incisors out at Christie’s sale of a beloved if bizarre 20th-century American gem: Bea Arthur Nude, a topless 1991 portrait of the late Golden Girls actress fashioned by 51-year-old American painter John Currin. Sold for $1.9 million on the same bullish evening that saw the auction house rake in a record $495 million, it garnered far more Gawker and gossip traffic than the auction’s $56.1 million Lichtenstein or $58.4 million Pollock canvases. The reason? In a phrase: the crack epidemic–like qualities of the global fame game. To paraphrase the tagline from the Twilight saga—when groupies live online forever, what do you really live for? 

 Witness the endless round robin of openings, lunches, dinners, cocktails, parties and late-night socializing that characterized the recent preview for the Venice Biennale—the Oscars of the art world. A biannual event that gathers plane and boatloads of artists, curators, and gallerists, as well as yacht-borne flotillas of celebrities, politicians and Fortune magazine boldface names, the 118-year-old art festival is a revolving door of powerhouse events that genuinely rivals the Academy Awards for unabashed glitz, glamour, and power tripping.... Celebrity sightings—as chronicled by dotcom oracles like ­LaineyGossip and Italia-online—continued unabated on a set of islands nearly sinking under the combined weight of art and money….  

The takeaway from this Bikini Atoll–like explosion of peacock feathers? It’s rather simple, really: despite the ongoing global recession, a tanking Italian economy, and significant cutbacks affecting myriad cultural institutions worldwide, relations between art’s super-rich and the planet’s super-famous have apparently never been cozier….

Link.

Who Owns Street Art?

Graffiti art, by its very nature, doesn’t lend itself well to gallery shows or commercial auctions. So how do you capitalize on the demand for an artist’s work if it exists on the side of a building? An anonymous individual recently answered that question by physically removing part of a wall painted by acclaimed graffiti artist Banksy and putting it up for auction at it an estimated price of more than half a million dollars.

The piece in question, now titled Slave Labor (Bunting Boy), originally appeared on the side of a London budget store in the Wood Green area last May; its imagery was considered a critique of the “real-life” discomfort and sweatshop conditions behind the cosy, nostalgic British iconography of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

The artwork was removed from the store along with a large chunk of the wall last week, as noted by a local resident at the time. It has since appeared on the website of Fine Art Auctions Miami among a number of modern pieces and will be auctioned at the end of this week for an estimated price of between $500,000 and $700,000.

According to Fine Art Auctions’ owner, Frederic Thut, the art is being offered by a “well-known collector” who prefers to remain anonymous, but has apparently provided proof that they own the work in question. (Attempts to reach Fine Art Auctions Miami for comment were unsuccessful.)

Poundland, the store from which the artwork was removed, has tweeted that it is “NOT responsible for either selling or removing the Banksy mural,” adding that it does not own the building in question and has been unable to contact the owner so far to find out more, while local politician Alan Strickland has already launched a campaign for the artwork to be returned.

Talking to reporters, Strickland explained that “Banksy gave this art for free to our community, so we’re all angry that it’s been removed and put on sale for $500,000 in the U.S. We’re trying to track down who is responsible. We’re not certain who removed it, but we’re absolutely certain we want it back!”

With the auction set to take place on Friday, however, the citizens of Wood Green have little time to argue their case. Of course, if all else fails, Banksy could always just paint a new piece about the appropriation of public art in its place.

UPDATE:

The BBC is citing a Miami auction house as saying it has withdrawn from sale an artwork by secretive graffiti artist Banksy that was removed from the side of a north London store.

The stencil of a young boy sewing Union Jack bunting vanished earlier this month, upsetting art lovers in the gritty Turnpike Lane area. It reappeared on the website of the Miami auction house, Fine Art Auctions, due to be sold Saturday with an estimated price of between $500,000 and $700,000.

But the BBC reported that the auction house confirmed the piece had been withdrawn from sale. It reported the auction house would not give a reason.

Poundland, the store that occupies the building, had said it had nothing to do with the removal.

TV Worth Watching Tonight

From Art in America:

Two decades ago, 60 Minutes's Morley Safer brought philistinism to new lows with his "Yes . . . But Is It Art?" segment, asking whether a vacuum cleaner or a urinal could be worthy of the name.

This Sunday, CBS will air an update in which Safer visits Art Basel Miami Beach to pose the question in market terms, as contemporary art sales are booming even as the larger economy is in shambles.

Jeffrey Deitch, LA MOCA director, was among those interviewed, and he rubs Safer's nose in the fact of a skyrocketing art market.

"In the art world, we remember very well that famous program that you did 20 years ago. It was almost a send-up of the contemporary art market," he tells Safer. In the original broadcast, the commentator mocked Jeff Koons's Equilibrium, consisting of three basketballs suspended in an aquarium. "I think at the time," Deitch points out, "Jeff Koons was very well sold for $250,000. As you know now, Koons's works have gone for $25 million or more."

In the program, even dealers find themselves flummoxed at contemporary art's success; as CBS points out, contemporary art has outperformed the Standard & Poor's list of 500 common stocks since 2003.

Los Angeles gallery owner Tim Blum says, "It's the Wild West. . . . It's an unregulated, utterly bizarre place to conduct business."  What sustains it against the odds? "It's inexplicable . . . almost unexplainable," says Blum. "When we begin to talk about it, we sort of drop the subject," says Blum. He goes on to admit that no one wants to rock the boat. "Because it almost feels like you should just let it . . . keep rolling."    

College Art Association Podcasts on Professional Development

I am new to podcasts. Since i got my iPad, they have become of interest to me to listen to as I commute and travel. The College Art Association of New York, has a series of podcasts on professional development here. Be warned: they are developed in the context of the American visual artist and life in the USA. However, a large percentage of the content is relevant to Canadian artists all artists with a goal to exhibit in the US.

Cross-Border Selling (to the US)

Basically, Canadian artists have three options to consider for moving artwork across the border. One option is to transport your work with a specialty shipping service such as PACART or TransArt. If you need other resources, try contacting the art gallery or art auction company closest to your for their recommendations.

Your second option is to use regular freight transportation delivery services that are listed online or in your local directory or you can use the fast delivery services of companies such as UPS, FedEx or Purolator. The third option is, of course, transporting the work across the border with you.

Regardless of which method you choose, you will be dealing with the Canada Customs & Revenue Agency (CCRA) and the US Customs Service and this is the greatest area of concern for many artists.

The critical considerations when deciding what to do are these:

1. The value of the work that you are shipping. If the total declared value of the work(s) that you want to transport is under $2,000 (in US dollars), you can access the “informal entry” route. (And worthy of note is the fact that you can ship work worth much more than that if—and only if—it is being shipped to multiple destinations with no single destination receiving work worth more than $2000.)

2. If the declared value of the work(s) that you want to transport is more than $2,000 (in US dollars) to a destination, then you should use a Customs Broker. (You do not have to if you can complete all the forms yourself and post an appropriate bond.)

If you like peace of mind, use a broker. They are licensed by both our and the US government to do all the complicated work for you—for a fee of course that is usually calculated as a percentage of the worth of your shipment. And shop around; not all brokers charge the same. Part of their fee includes the posting of the bond required for your work to enter the US. Ideally, you will use the same broker if shipping your work back to Canada is required.

From Raymond St. Arnaud:

I have been shipping art for exhibition to the USA and returning it to Canada for several years, perhaps 70 odd shipments, and was invited to share my experience on avoiding brokerage fees. I learned some difficult lessons but [found] some solutions [so] I have posted a “Guide for shipping art to the USA” on my website that was the basis for my presentation."

THANK YOU RAYMOND!